Baby Hattie puts a bit of a banana into her mouth and then spits it back out. Puts it back in her mouth for a second try, gets frustrated and then yells “No!” The banana’s back on the floor.

Hattie isn’t having it, but the whole world is laughing in delight.

It’s been a roller coaster ride for Hattie and her family over the past several years, ever since Susie Wise, who works at the Stanford Institute of Design, and her husband Frazer Bradshaw agreed to let the small French documentary film “Bebés,” feature their child. “Bebés” has now morphed into the American heart-wringer “Babies.” The film follows four children–one in Namibia, one in Mongolia, one in Tokyo and one, Wise’s child, in San Francisco–across their first year of life, from first breaths to first steps.

Wise became involved in the project before she had ever even seen Hattie’s face. In January 2006, her husband Bradshaw, a filmmaker, received a call asking if he’d be interested in filming a baby in San Francisco for a movie, and if he knew anyone expecting a baby in April or May–coincidentally, his wife was. Susie agreed to let her husband and a French film team document her future child for 18 months.

“I thought it seemed really interesting,” she said. “It was very clearly not going to be an America’s Home Video, it was very cinematic, the director had a deep and historical knowledge of documentary films. And, Frazer was earning income while just hanging out at home.”

“We never thought it would be this big,” Wise laughed. “We never even thought it would be shown in American theaters!”

However, Focus Features bought the film and released it in the United States to over $2 million on its opening weekend.

A doctoral student in the School of Education at the time they became involved, Wise had been naturally attracted to the idea of comparing the lives of four babies plopped down in extremely different lifestyles. She was certainly not without doubts–but not the type of doubts one might expect to trouble a parent about to show off her child to the world.

“Because we were the American family…there was some fear of being pigeonholed as super materialistic or super techno-centric, or too overbearing,” she said. “Among Americans in general we’re really pretty chill, but in comparison to families in Namibia, of course, we look that way.”

It seems Wise’s fears weren’t unfounded. Reviews of the movie have floated the idea that Hattie’s family is too focused on toys and parenting books. Bloggers have especially focused on a baby yoga class in which Hattie makes a break for the door.

Wise is accepting of the criticism, but feels most bothered by the articles that have called her daughter “stressed” by an over-stimulated lifestyle.

“I have to not be defensive because I totally support that message [of a more relaxed parenting style],” Wise said. And the film helped reinforce that message both for her and for other viewers.

“Children don’t learn from fancy toys, they learn from observing their environment, and the film shows that message beautifully,” Wise added.

Wise also used “Babies” to promote her own message. She recently became involved with Embrace, a project pioneered by students from the Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class in Stanford’s d.school. Embrace has created incubator devices to help save the 20 million premature and low-birth-weight babies born every year, many in developing countries.

At a mere $25, compared to traditional incubators at $20,000, Wise believes that Embrace has great potential to help babies across the world. Since she, and the other three babies and their families, don’t receive any proceeds from the movie, she decided to make something good out of it by turning the “Babies” premiere into a fundraiser for Embrace.

So following this massive, worldwide parenting display, what’s Wise’s take-away message for parents?

“There are lots of different parenting styles,” she said. “The most important thing is, just love your kid!”

Hattie, now 4 years old, has certainly grown up with a lot of love. Since her father did most of the filming, following her around with a camera one or two days per week, her early life was not too disrupted by the making of the movie.

Wise and her husband watched the movie for the first time on a laptop in their living room this past December. The viewing quelled Susie’s fears of being typecast, and she recently brought Hattie to see it in the movie theater.

Seeing herself on the big screen had a strong effect on Hattie, though her parents are trying to make sure she doesn’t think of herself as a movie star. Soon after Hattie saw the movie for the first time, says Wise, she went to a birthday party with a Dora the Explorer cutout.

“That’s Dora, she has a movie too!” Hattie exclaimed.

Her parents reminded her that she wasn’t the only baby the movie featured, and now, whenever adults come up to her and tell her she’s a movie star, Hattie reportedly replies modestly, “Well, there are three other babies.”

However, the Wises have never even spoken to the other three families that helped make their daughter a star. They don’t share a common language, but Susie has had dreams of a grand reunion ever since the beginning of the project.

“I love the idea that Hattie has this kind of magical connection with these children,” Wise said. “What a cool gift to give to this child.”